George Bush's admin had a legal memo too - to define torture as necessary for security.

Now we have a legal memo rationalizing the killing of people, without the need for evidence, that are not even planning any specific action against the US.

It also, by the way, rationalizes the deaths of anyone that is near them when the missile explodes as "collateral damage".

Sometimes, what is necessary, is not to look more closely at the detailed rationalizations by crafty lawyers, but to take a step back and ask who we are and what we want to be -and what we want our children to be.

7. What?

"if George Bush hadn't sent troops in but instead had just sent missiles flying into Iraq, killing thousands, would you have taken his word for it that they were all terrorists?"

The war killed nearly a million Iraqies. If he had sent a drone to take out Saddam, that would have saved a lot of lives, including the lives of more than 4,000 Americans. The problem of course was that his entire basis for targeting Saddam was a lie.

32. The issue here is not the killing, but the killing of an American citizen without the due process

guaranteed by our Constitution.

With his drone killings of American citizens, Obama has made a mockery of our Constitution.

You know that I supported the President for re-election. I'm beginning to have second thoughts.

If he wants to have support in the mid-term elections so that he can have a Congress that is more cooperative on the broader agenda he has, he is going to have to change this policy and do it loud and clear.

I do not want to be disrespectful to the President, but this drone policy violates any decent reading of the Constitution. Glen Greenwald is an expert on this. He knows.

33. Thanks.

34. This is the war that never ends. It just goes on and on my friend...

Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue fighting it forever just because...This is the war that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue fighting it forever just because...This is the war that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend...

10. i do not condone this, not one little bit.

11. "Yet here we are almost a full decade later"

6. Making a mockery of "due process"

The core freedom most under attack by the War on Terror is the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process. It provides that "no person shall be . . . deprived of life . . . without due process of law". Like putting people in cages for life on island prisons with no trial, claiming that the president has the right to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield without any charges or trial is the supreme evisceration of this right.

...

It is fitting indeed that the memo expressly embraces two core Bush/Cheney theories to justify this view of what "due process" requires. First, it cites the Bush DOJ's core view, as enunciated by John Yoo, that courts have no role to play in what the president does in the War on Terror because judicial review constitutes "judicial encroachment" on the "judgments by the President and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force". And then it cites the Bush DOJ's mostly successful arguments in the 2004 Hamdi case that the president has the authority even to imprison US citizens without trial provided that he accuses them of being a terrorist.

The reason this is so fitting is because, as I've detailed many times, it was these same early Bush/Cheney theories that made me want to begin writing about politics, all driven by my perception that the US government was becoming extremist and dangerous. During the early Bush years, the very idea that the US government asserted the power to imprison US citizens without charges and due process (or to eavesdrop on them) was so radical that, at the time, I could hardly believe they were being asserted out in the open.

Yet here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed - and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight. If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable.

13. "Courts have no role to play in what the president does in the War on Terror"

30. So where does the Constitution say it applies outside US jurisdiction?

It's very nice that we have the 5th amendment. But where does the Constitution say the Constitution is in force outside US jurisdiction?

It isn't. The president can assassinate anyone he feels like, as long as they are not in US jurisdiction. And this has been the case since Washington was President. The only things reigning in this power is an Executive Order signed by Ford, and Congress's willingness to pay for it.

38. The Sixth Amendment applies in "all criminal prosecutions."

If we are at war with another country, then the Sixth Amendment does not apply to the soldiers and others of the country with which we are at war.

Most likely, the Supreme Court would agree with you, but they would be very wrong. The Bill of Rights limits the power and authority of our government as to us, the people. It is a covenant between us as individuals, as persons, and our government.

In my view, the Constitution gives the President the authority to do what he wants outside our country to non-citizens with whom we are at war, but the covenant that is our Constitution and our Bill of Rights limits the power of our government including the president no matter where we citizens are. If this were not true, we would not need the time-consuming process of extradition, but we do.

I disagree with your analysis. I am not an expert in this area, but this is how I see it. In my view, Obama is trying to avoid admitting the fact that he is trying American citizens as prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner. That is completely outside the basic structure and concept of our law. It defies justice. It's just downright ugly.

The Constitution is a covenant between the People of the United States and the government. I do not see how that covenant is limited by geography.

I say that as one who lived overseas for years. When you live overseas, you have to meet certain obligations as an American citizen. Maybe the most obvious one is that you have to renew your passport after a certain number of years. There are other obligations that you must fulfill. The obligations are reciprocal as far as I am concerned. If Americans under certain circumstances must pay US taxes while living abroad, then certainly they should enjoy the rights of our Constitution.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

62. I'm SICK & tired of you playing dumbass

actually ASKING why "should" citizens have what you speciously call "special protections".....are you an American? you do not comprehend the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights because IT'S SELF EVIDENT in SO many ways.

70. No, the dumbasses are the ones thinking citizens have special due process rights.

The entire point of the due process rights in the Constitution is that they apply to EVERYONE under US jurisdiction. The accused is a human being, and all human beings have these rights.

The problem in this situation is the executive branch has near absolute power when it comes to foreign affairs. That needs to be changed. Simply stopping the drone strikes today won't fix the problem - a future president could still assassinate people.

24. I don't think the OP intended to defend Obama at all. His or her point, as I read it, is that

crimes against humanity (whether torture or extra-judicial execution) can be rendered 'legal' no matter which party is in power. That's why the OP concludes by saying we need to examine who we are and what we intend to be.

36. You are telling a story you like, and not the truth

about the SS protection. It was a restoration of the protections that their predecessors enjoy including Carter and Clinton. And if you think the first black ex president isn't still going to need protection in 2027, I think you are quite naive.

46. Clinton got to keep his it was passed during his administration

and you can't change the compensation of a President while he is in office. The salary was raised to 400k from 200k and the secret service protection reduced from lifetime to 10 years. Clinton got neither change. The change Obama signed in his first term applied to Bush and the winner of the 12 election which ended up being him. Frankly I think given the circumstance it is a good thing that both of them will have the protection past the 10 year mark.

63. Don't forget Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel

The United States Army has been criticised for using the base as a detention facility, and for the conditions faced by the detainees there.

In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a "smaller version of Guantanamo" following a visit. The Swiss newspaper Weltwoche reported, "A German report by the Berlin Institute for European Policy, produced last year on behalf of the German army... is particularly critical of the role of the US, which had obstructed European investigations and which had been opened up to political extortion by the existence of a secret CIA detention center on the grounds of Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo...” In response, the US Army stated that there were no secret detention facilities in the Camp.

In January 2009, the inspector general’s office issued a report that said it had found no wrongdoing in the program. But soon after, the inspector general’s office retracted the entire report, saying it was so riddled with inaccuracies and flaws that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In late 2009, the inspector general’s office began a new inquiry.

The results of the new inquiry, first reported by The Washington Times, confirm that the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld made a concerted effort starting in 2002 to reach out to network military analysts to build and sustain public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

~snip~

But several former top aides to Mr. Rumsfeld insisted that the purpose of the program was merely to inform and educate, and many of the 63 military analysts interviewed during the inquiry agreed.

Given the conflicting accounts, the inspector general’s office scrutinized some 25,000 pages of documents related to the program. But except for one “unsigned, undated, draft memorandum,” investigators could not find any documents that described the strategy or objective of the program. Investigators said that to understand the program’s intent, they had to rely on interviews with Mr. Rumsfeld’s former public affairs aides, including his spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke. Based on these interviews, the report said, investigators concluded that the “outreach activities were intended to serve as an open information exchange with credible third-party subject-matter experts” who could “explain military issues, actions and strategies to the American public.”

The Obama administration has shielded the Bush administration from torture investigations, both here and abroad.

Then Senator Obama promised to filibuster a bill that would give retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies; instead, he voted for it. (Both he and Rahm were the top recipients of 2008 AT&T campaign contributions.) The domestic surveillance program has expanded under the Obama administration.

This is in addition to the fun stuff the Bush administration left behind, like NSPD 51.

So now the Obama administration can monitor our phone calls, emails, Twitter accounts, Google searches, etc. to determine if we're an associate of a terror organization (Occupy? WikiLeaks?) and either rendition us to another country to be tortured and coerced to confess a crime that was never committed, or assassinate us by drone without a trial. And then lie about it.

47. Amazingly Reagan had an Executive Order saying assassination was illegal

not just a memo
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/15/five-reasons-drone-assassinations-are-illegal/In 1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905, Section 5(g), which states “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” President Reagan followed up to make the ban clearer in Executive Order 12333. Section 2.11 of that Order states “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” Section 2.12 further says “Indirect participation. No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order.” This ban on assassination still stands.

The reason for the ban on assassinations was that the CIA was involved in attempts to assassinate national leaders opposed by the US. Among others, US forces sought to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.

That was the result of the Church Committee investigations into the CIA's family jewels. Assassination was presumed to be illegal, and since the CIA was ignoring that, Congress underlined it for the Executive just as FISA court law was supposed to underline for the Executive that warrantless wiretapping was unConsititutional, per the 4th Amendment. But that was then and now we're back in the assassination business. YEE HAW! WE'RE BACK BABY!

Can you wait for the rationalizations for renewed torture when it comes out that we're back in that business too? Hey, we've always used torture - ask the Filipinos! Ask the Vietnamese! They know! All Presidents have always had this power ! Oh yeah, it's gonna be sweet.

73. K&R To see support for this monstrosity on DU is really something.

74. On one hand, it is not surprising. But it an excellent illustration of human nature.

I can see why some people are offended by the phrase "you have no moral compass", but I am afraid it is accurate.

If a person would vigorously oppose the same action in a Dem president that they approve of because their party is doing it, then I am afraid that is a real indictment of their "moral compass" (insert any other phrase meaning the same thing here).

75. I have hard time understanding this type of mentality. I would be ashamed of myself if I changed

The tune simply because "my team" is in power.

I still want to know the answer to one simple question: how do we know that anyone murdererd by a drone under this policy is actually a "bad guy"?

Don't we have enough examples of people wrongfully convicted by legal justice system? Did everyone already forgot that even something as solid as DNA evidence is not really that solid if it comes from a lab like Huston crime lab (google DNA and Huston Crime lab). What about convictions obtained with the help of Forensic Hair Comparison (google forensic hair comparison)?